8/10

We’re gonna have to start putting the “auteur” title on Shane Carruth if he keeps this up. First Primer, then Upstream Color – quite the impressive one-two punch.

I reviewed Upstream Color a few days ago so just keep scrolling if you’re interested in my thoughts on that. As for Primer, no it isn’t as peculiar of a film as Upstream, but it is good. And as a debut it is very good. And as a film that was made for $7,000 it is very, very, fucking good.

But it really is a call to arms. It’s a loud heralding to greet the rising sun. It’s the head of a newborn poking through the amniotic sac. It’s a breath of fresh air in a room of rotting fruit. Or maybe I’m heaping too much praise upon it simply because I saw Upstream Color first and loved it and I expect great things to come from Carruth. Sure, it could be that, but the film is interesting in its own right, and it’s exciting to be present at the beginning of an artist’s career.

I often wonder what will happen to my writings in the future. Will they be pored over and celebrated as stepping stones to something greater? Or will they be lost into the abyss of the Internet when/if I stumble and fall down the shaft into a career of inconsequence – not inconsequence because of the particular career (as if all careers except for stream-of-conscious random tangent emotional writing are of inconsequence, no, no. no), but inconsequence because I would be sacrificing my happiness to achieve monatary wealth or because I have learned/discovered/decided talent escapes me or because I have simply lost all hope or for any other reason.

For any and all reasons I trip off my path and stack up my words haphazardly and uncaringly into their books and I strike the match and I let it burn and cinder and scream in a round steel garbage can underneath a dirty bridge underneath a dirty city. And they’ll be lost to the wind forever – turned back to the dust from whence they came – and no one will ever be the wiser.